


Paw-sible Deniability

by florahart



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Animal Transformation, Deaf Clint Barton, Established Relationship, M/M, Phil Coulson knows best, Remix, Strategy is hard when you have to figure out claws, Vents, rated R for ridiculous
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-21
Updated: 2020-09-21
Packaged: 2021-03-05 18:52:41
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,449
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25820113
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/florahart/pseuds/florahart
Summary: Look, it's just sitting there.  Clintnevergets to touch the 0-8-4s.  It is fully not his fault except for how he wasn't supposed to touch it and he did, but meanwhile, he is definitely not going in a travel carrier while he waits for Phil to come fix him.  Just, no.
Relationships: Clint Barton/Phil Coulson
Comments: 43
Kudos: 226
Collections: 2020 ClintCoulson Remix: Quarantine Edition





	Paw-sible Deniability

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Celticas](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Celticas/gifts).
  * Inspired by [Accidental Cat-ifiation](https://archiveofourown.org/works/21294248) by [Celticas](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Celticas/pseuds/Celticas). 



_Plausible deniability_ , Clint thought. Because that right there was definitely the 0-8-4 brought in from Dresden two days before, and it was unattended.

Well, effectively unattended; there were people, but not near enough to jump into range, because the science kids were not always quite aware of the physicality of guarding someone (someone, something, whatever, the principles were the same) in the same way as an agent who came up through the army or for that matter someone like Janekowski, who had been a D1 safety in what was now one of the Power 5 conferences – where he had learned at least something about what it meant to guard closely.

Anyway. 0-8-4, unattended, and _right there_.

And how often was he allowed to touch the wild shit the geeks played with? Hundred percent of never, was the answer, and like, okay, _yes_ it was because Phil was looking out for him, because that's what decent humans did for people they cared about for no other reason than the caring, and wasn't that a fucked up thing to have only learned in your thirties, but come _on_. Weird shit was also sometimes (usually?) _cool_ shit, and sure, it was possible, in principle, it would turn him into some kind of mindless automaton doing the bidding of a powerful being, or at least that was the case Phil had made, but that seemed pretty unlikely to be the sort of thing which would happen to the same guy twice. Right? 

Still, the current situation was a giant neon _plausible deniability_ sign, and ignoring that seemed foolish, at best. What kind of specialist would Clint even _be_ if he didn’t go with the moment?

Fortunately, he was pretty good at logistics and strategy. And gymnastics. And timing.

Like, if he’d played for Iowa, he’d definitely have gotten past Janekowski, so.

He "tripped" on his way back from grabbing his spare quiver and set his palm squarely on the rounded knob of the device.

And then set his ass, unexpectedly and in some kind of what the hell foldy high-ankled legs maneuver, on the floor.

Shit. 

Well, not an automaton, so there. He scrambled to his feet, which ...also included his hands, so that probably meant he had not been transformed into a _T.Rex_? and shoved his way out of the pile of clothing he'd been wearing a moment earlier.

Ew. 

His clothes were super stinky, now that he had whatever animal olfactory system he was looking at here. They were, like, a bouquet of stale pizza and some kind of medicinal cream, dirty socks, old blood, probably some kind of pepper, and a whole lot of musky sweaty balls smell, and even as he thought it smelled gross, it was also just about all he could do not to shove his face back into the pile and smell his way to a theory of the universe or something. Was he, like, a hound? That didn’t seem right and he was probably too small. Too stocky to be a ferret, too big for a mouse. Cat? He thought about it for a second, then sat his butt down again, on purpose this time, and watched as a floofy tail came to rest tucked around him. Tawny orange and irregularly ringed in some kind of creamy gold, and long enough to wrap all the way around and tickle himself in the ass on the other side. 

Okay then, yes, that suggested cat, so he held up a hand (foot, whatever) and tried to figure out how sheathed fingernails worked. With no frame of reference for 'shoot your fingernails out on purpose' other than watching Logan rip his out through skin, which was neither how cats worked nor comfortable-looking at all, he wasn't very successful, but damn it, now there were people coming, people who looked like they might be freaking out, and yeah, no, he was _not_ going in a travel carrier while they figured out what had happened.

Clint ran, scrambling a little when his toe hairs slid on the polished concrete until he figured out traction. Which, honestly that was kind of cool – slidy and stable in the same limb. He got around a couple of corners and slowed to make an actual plan that wasn’t just ‘run.’ Because see previous; good at strategy, and getting caught was not on the objectives list even all the way at the bottom. Fuck that.

All right.

There was good news and bad news about his new cat perspective. For one thing, his eyes were different – different in color vision acuity and different in their spatial relationships to his ears, and so it took a few minutes of looking up and around, at door plates and light switches, shadows and reflections, to develop a working understanding of how to understand relative distances. His aids, of course, had tumbled free of his ears just like his pants had dropped off his ass, so his hearing wasn’t _great_ , but it seemed he was working from a better starting point? Or at least, a starting point with a different frequency range. He could hear, just …fuzzy and low in the normal human auditory range, but clearly way high. Which meant besides a bunch of hums and buzzes that must be in the lights, hearing the elevator coming was a weird new experience because what he could hear was, like, a chirp in the hydraulics but what he could feel in his little …he stopped to check, resisting the extremely strange urge to groom. in his little _pink_ toebeans was the rumble of the approaching car.

Probably an actual cat would not have understood the connection well, but Clint wasn’t an actual cat. Obviously. Actually, a lot of _people_ probably would have had a hard time with the divorcement between the senses, different from the usual lack of auditory input but at least he had that point of reference. In any case, he knew what was happening, but he still felt hairs standing up on his back regarding the rumble. 

Yeah, okay, it was fair; rumbles for feral cats probably meant serious bad juju, and sure, he was basically tame (ish) now, but he had a special place in his heart for ferals. Still, he told his back furs everything was fine and ducked into a little recess where a pillar and a fire hose box would make him hard to see and waited. It just took a minute for the box to come up and the (ew, so stinky, more balls and not in a pleasant way) running squad to go on by, and then he took a quick peek, scrambled into the car before the door closed, and …damn it. Jumping was a coordination task and his depth perception was messed up, too. Well, no time like the present. He crouched, did some kind of instinctive butt-wiggle that very, very much cemented his notion that keeping himself out of range of Wu’s camera-wielding ass was a very, very high priority, and launched for the buttons, jabbing out to snag the one he wanted.

Oh! Neat, that was how the claws worked. 

Then he lined up right at the edge of the door, ready to dart if people started in at the next stop or do recon if no one was there. Which, okay, if Phil had been in the house they’d already have him on cams, but Williams and Anderson were both all science, and half their team was (relatively) wet behind the ears, so he figured he had another minute or so before they untangled themselves from their upsettedness and started working the specific problem of what about when an agent who’s a specialist and a spy has been accidentally cattified (categorized? con _cat_ enated?) and is on the loose on base.

The chirps changed as the rumble slowed, and Clint got ready to jump.

Damn it, people. Well, whatever, he’d handled worse. He squirmed between their ankles, hoping not to actually make whoever was in heels and smelled like smoke and cinnamon to break an ankle but caring less about that than remaining uncaged, and zipped off down the hall to S7. The lock was tricky and there was a decent chance it would be not-quite closed.

It looked closed as he approached, but he was pretty sure it still hadn’t been fixed, and he was right—all he had to do was lift up onto his back feet and set his ‘hands’ against the door, and it clicked and fell open three inches. And the shelves under the vent high in the wall were still exactly where he’d left them. Perfect. Especially since Plan B would have been a giant pain in his cat-sized ass.

Being a spy, he knew better than to leave the door open; he leaned on it hard until it half-clicked back to closed. 

Popping the vent cover was more of a challenge than he wanted it to be. The claws were still an issue, because doing something sort of instinctually while flying through the air and doing it by thinking about it were not the same, but eventually he thought he had it. Of course, shit, when he did this as a human he could pull the cover back into place after him, and that was probably off the table in the current context, so he had to spend ten minutes wrestling with the clips he’d pushed off the hinge two years ago. Ugh. Opposable thumbs were underfuckingrated and he lost three claw tips, one of which split painfully, in the process.

He felt floor vibrations nearing again, although he wasn’t really hearing much, and sighed. Even if they knew where he’d gone, it would still take them forever to find him in the HVAC, so it was now or never. He slid one of his remaining sharp claws under the cover, pulled it hard enough to get his head through, spared a moment to feel grateful that once his head was through the rest would follow (yay cat shoulders?) and slithered on in, letting it slam on his tail a little (OW.) because it would be quiet. Then the light changed and he shuffled on his awesome silent little toes, far enough back into the vent to avoid observation.

Happily, the science folks took several minutes to examine the room and clearly never thought about whether a cat would try the vent. Which, had they met any cats? Honestly.

When he was satisfied his secret was basically safe, and all the searchers were across the room gathered in a little knot of debriefing, he took a second to go back to the top of the vent and roll around; his feet had disturbed the little dust that had gathered since he’d last scouted through this one and toebean footprints would be a dead giveaway if they eventually decided to look. Fortunately, the dust really wasn’t much, so suppressing the urge to sneeze wasn’t so bad.

Then he wandered off, to the left, along the slight incline before this vent met up with the primary. He was a little worried about the turn back as he dropped under the floor; in human form it was tight as fuck, but he had leverage; in this form he had …claws on metal. Probably less useful. However, once he was there it was a matter of a well-timed bounce off the far side, and then, okay, a little more scramble than preferred especially since his sinuses decided they were done hanging onto that sneeze halfway in the middle, but it was fine. It was totally fine.

Or, okay, he might end up needing a little icy hot or something for his sprained ass, but whatever, he already had a bruised tail and sore fingernails, so basically, par for the course anyway.

He made his way long the tunnel to his goal and sat back down on his butt. Then, since it actually wasn’t uncomfortable here at this size, he shrugged, yawned (satisfying! His mouth opened really wide!) and curled in a ball and went to sleep. Phil wasn’t due back for at least a couple hours. Might as well catch a catnap. While he was a cat. 

The grate coming off rattled the edge of the vent, setting up a shimmy that startled him awake. Before he even had his eyes open he was hissing, ears trying to swivel for danger and entire body puffed up to the point of absurdity.

Then, there was a muffled sound up through the open vent hole and then a hand, and before he’d managed to shake his head a little and get to full wakefulness he’d lashed out, claws on maximum and back furs all standing every which way as he hop-danced back again. Wait, wait. Damn it. That hand smelled like home and safe and gunpowder and the rubber grip things on pens, and only the most pleasant kind of sweat and musk. That hand smelled amazing. He tried to think his fur and claws into submission, with mixed success, and stepped forward to let himself fall right out of the vent into Phil’s hands.

Phil said something, but it was muffled and weird, and all Clint really got from it was a sibilant at the beginning and a chuh toward the end. He twisted around and got a grip on Phil’s lapel, then squirmed in close before bringing up one paw and batting at his own ear while hollering. His mouth couldn’t shape words, so he thought all he was managing was a sort of running low yowl, but it was hard to tell.

“Ah.” Phil’s eyebrows went up, and then he waved his free hand, the one not clutching Clint in close. _I see you had an adventure,_ he signed. 

Clint closed his eyes and bumped his forehead against Phil’s chin.

 _Because you grabbed an 0-8-4,_ Phil went on.

Clint tried to make a quiet little mew of apology, but Phil was still signing. _Good thing you’re cute. Simmons is working on how to make it reverse what it did. Meanwhile…_

Meanwhile nothing. Clint was staying right here. He dug his claws in harder, snuggled up against Phil’s neck, and closed his eyes. The rumble from his own body was weird as fuck, but Phil didn’t seem to hate it; he brought his other hand up to pet Clint’s back, and really, there was nothing else he needed. Safe, protected, not being yelled at, and surrounded by Philsmells.

He butted his forehead against Phil again, his ear this time, then folded his front feet under his chin and went to sleep. 


End file.
